To the Editor:
My mentoring teacher at Lower Cape May Regional, in the 60s, advised me, “Don’t forget, this isn’t college. This is conservative, Republican Cape May County. Stick with the textbook. Don’t stray into truth or reality. A few reality-based lessons and the principal’s phone will ring off the hook.” So much for truth in education down here.
Thus, I was disappointed, but not surprised, to read a letter in the Feb. 2 Herald echoing the latest trend in Republican attacks on school boards across the country.
This time, instead of trying to ban “Catcher in the Rye,” “Huck Finn,” or “To Kill a Mockingbird” for warping children’s minds, the author and somebody’s grandmother criticized the elected Lower Board of Education for having lost its “moral compass” by failing to ban a book entitled “Black and White” from a Lower Township elementary school library.
The book has won a few national awards and is a story about two good buddies, one black, one white, both high school basketball stars who get into trouble with the law. Race plays a large role in how each of the older teens is treated throughout the book.
The letter’s author complained to the Lower BOE about violence, sexuality, and language that she and the grandmother find inappropriate. She failed to mention her or the grandmother’s qualifications as a guardian of morality or even as a good parent/grandparent.
I couldn’t tell from her letter if she has ever actually used a library, or knows that the reading there is voluntary, not required.
Further, most kids by age 10 are already subjected to substantial web and TV violence and obscenities, which led me to wonder what world she lives in.
She further claims that the book is divisive (a recent right-wing buzzword) because it tells of different treatment under the law and in the community accorded to races. Oh my – schools teaching kids about reality? How subversive!
Does she think that nothing that might be “divisive” should be taught? In which case, since any subject can be “divisive” or hurt someone’s feelings, perhaps schools should teach nothing?
I recall that one of the few teachers that I found interesting in WW High had us seniors debate Nixon/Kennedy, that’s divisive… and very instructive.
Allow me to assure those who sympathize with that author’s feelings, that kids are pretty tough, and that teachers and librarians are not fools, duped by a ‘liberal agenda.’
In fact, school professionals most often have children of their own and have dealt with a cross-section of probably a thousand or so kids for 160 days every year over the course of 20 years.
Before school board meetings turn into shouting matches, think about this: Who is probably a better judge of what is appropriate or harmful for a wide range of kids – someone who has been in contact with hundreds/thousands of kids on a regular basis as a professional or somebody’s grandparent of their own kid or four?
